The Return of the Restorative Cocktail

A few months after Philadelphia's apothecary bar + lounge opened in May 2008, a stern and unexpected letter arrived in the mail. It was, essentially, the 19th century, writing to say it wanted its name back.

The letter was from state regulators. It informed the bar's owners that they were in violation of Section 8 (8) of the Pennsylvania Pharmacy Act, which requires any business using the name apothecary to have a licensed pharmacist on the premises. The bar (which recently closed) did not have one, so consulting mixologist Tad Carducci and his partners changed the name to Apo Bar + Lounge.

It turns out that Carducci's bar was not alone in being visited by this ghost of drugstores past. In New Orleans, Neal Bodenheimer had drawn up a business plan for a bar that was also to be called Apothecary—until he learned he'd be running afoul of arcane laws. (His bar, now called Cure, opened in 2009 in a renovated firehouse.) And in New York City, the stylish, innovative bar Apotheke in Chinatown, which opened in 2008, skirted the issue by appropriating the German word for The Place That Must Not Be Named.

That apothecary is still a legally protected term seems antiquated and slightly curious. Perhaps no more curious, though, than modern bars finding inspiration in old pharmacies. Yet for anyone with even cursory knowledge of cocktail history, it makes perfect sense—cocktails have long had ties to the healing arts.

"The apothecary cures the ills and maladies of everyday life, and the bartender has historically done the same," says Carducci. "There has always been a strong connection between barmen and the apothecary."

Ted Haigh, a drink historian and author of Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, agrees. "Every booze under the sun was initially thought of as a curative," he says. Medicinal herbs, which for centuries were synonymous with medicine, were often preserved in alcohol, a process that dates back at least to Chartreuse, an elixir made by Carthusian monks in the 17th century. Herbs steeped in alcohol eventually evolved into commonly available medicinal bitters (often advertised as "stomach bitters"), including the popular Angostura bitters, which were originally created to treat gastrointestinally challenged soldiers in South America, and Peychaud's bitters, which once advertised itself as "the most successful restorative and tonic known in cases of general debility."

Bitters were also an essential ingredient in a new drink called cocktail—a blend of spirits, bitters, and sugar—first mentioned in print in 1803, and often taken as a restorative to shake off torpor. "Restorative was a euphemism for anything that you took to restore or uplift your spirit, generally in the morning," says Haigh. Restoratives could be very simple, such as the "milk punch restorative" prescribed by Lafcadio Hearn in La Cuisine Créole in 1885, consisting of milk, sugar, and spirits over ice. Haigh says many restoratives tended to be "herbal-forward," reflecting the presence of bitters. "The addition of bitters in a morning cocktail was akin to pouring paregoric or Robitussin into your beer," he says. "At that point, people took bitters very seriously as medicine."

That seriousness eroded throughout the 19th century as the market became awash in snake oil and other bogus nostrums peddled by shady characters. This led to the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906, which in turn led to the FDA, and a more clearly demarcated border between liquor and medicine. Alcoholic drinks moved from the apothecary to the bar.

Today, cocktails appear to be migrating back, at least symbolically,as inventive bartenders sift through artifacts of the past, rediscovering and redeploying ingredients once found in the apothecary's inventory. Mixologists no longer claim that these modern restoratives will cure what ails you—a slew of even more severe letters would surely arrive from regulators if they did—but some barmen are embracing the intense flavors of those early restoratives, and offering the suggestion, rather than the promise, of healing.

"It's not really a new concept," says Albert Trummer of Apotheke. "It's more like a forgotten concept."

The grand interior of Apotheke (slogan: "Prescriptions served daily") is designed to evoke the formality of the apothecaries Trummer often visited as a child growing up in Vienna, with wingback chairs, pharmacist's scales, and shelves lined with vintage medicine bottles. His drink list is likewise evocative of a lost era, with some 250 cocktails grouped into categories such as "stimulants," "painkillers" (tequila drinks, some with hot peppers), and "stress relievers" (lots of lavender and sage).

"Before we had antibiotics, we had house remedies," says Trummer, who likes the term medicinal cocktail. "My story is based on an old tradition of house remedies, which you'd get at your grandmother's house if you weren't feeling well." Trummer prides himself on Apotheke's house-made tinctures, bitters, and syrups, which include an intense cherry elixir, made by cooking down 500 cherries over five days and concentrating all that flavor into a small bottle to be dispensed a few drops at a time.

Carducci says the role of the barman resembles that of the early pharmacist in more than just wares—both had to be highly solicitous of their customers' needs, then as now. "Anyone in the hospitality business ought to read their guests and make recommendations, but we pushed that a little bit and made sure everybody was more than happy," he says. "At Apo, we would ask them about their moods, their states of mind, and then steer themin the right direction."

At the least, the renewed dalliance between apothecary and bar opens the door for exploring lost tastes and social attitudes, and that alone can lift spirits. "There's a theatrical aspect to cocktails," says Trummer. "A cocktail place should be fun, and you can have fun if the quality's right."